ZOOM0001_Tr1-Cost_of_Living_vs_Quality_of_Life-auphonic
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00:00:31.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:34.200 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while
00:00:38.960 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. Today in the show, we're going
00:00:42.960 | to talk about the cost of living versus quality of life with an international flair. I received
00:00:51.040 | today's show topic when I was recently trolling about on Twitter asking listeners what they
00:00:56.080 | would like to hear me talk about, and one listener wrote to me and said, basically,
00:00:59.860 | talk about the cost of living versus the quality of life in an international context. And I
00:01:04.560 | thought this a useful and interesting topic, partly because it is something that I am living,
00:01:11.200 | am in the middle of considering and working my way through in different things, but it's
00:01:16.200 | something that I've also thought a lot about, and I think it has application even outside
00:01:21.680 | of an international context. Because in many ways, these factors, comparing the cost of
00:01:27.640 | living versus the quality of life, these are factors that we all have to consider in our
00:01:33.120 | own unique context. Even if you're considering, should I live in downtown Atlanta or in the
00:01:40.360 | suburbs? Well, you're going to talk about the cost of living versus the quality of life.
00:01:44.600 | Should I live in Kansas or should I live in California? You're going to talk about the
00:01:49.080 | cost of living versus the quality of life. And these factors are sometimes difficult
00:01:53.920 | to talk about because they're very subjective. Both of these are very subjective. Obviously,
00:02:01.640 | the quality of life is more subjective than cost of living because we can put dollars
00:02:05.360 | and cents to the costs, but even the costs are subjective because we all value different
00:02:10.480 | things. We all spend money on different things. We all have different things that are appropriate
00:02:14.300 | in our life stage. And so we're going to have, even if we consider the same factors, we're
00:02:19.440 | going to weigh factors a little bit differently. So as I go through these ideas, I'm going
00:02:24.120 | to talk to you about them in a fairly general way and give you my thoughts on the international
00:02:29.880 | context versus primarily where I have the most experience, a US-American context. You
00:02:36.800 | should recognize that you have to do this no matter where you live and that your appreciation
00:02:43.840 | of different factors will probably change at different times. For example, having a
00:02:50.120 | small house versus a large house. How much you value a small house versus a large house
00:02:57.360 | will probably change depending on what life stage you're in. For me, my opinion, if I
00:03:03.520 | were a single man living alone, I would value having a small house. I would not want to
00:03:09.280 | have a big house because the big house adds work, more work to keep up with, more work
00:03:15.680 | to clean, more work to furnish. It adds more hassle to my life. It adds more things I have
00:03:20.280 | to care for. It adds more costs, more square feet that I have to heat, that I have to cool,
00:03:25.720 | et cetera. And so as a single man, I would value having a smaller house more than I would
00:03:30.640 | have value having a larger house. And it's not just about the cost. It's not just that
00:03:35.040 | I can save money. Yes, that could help me. But frankly, I think if you gave me a house
00:03:40.000 | twice as big and a house half as big and they were the same cost and I liked them equally,
00:03:44.160 | I would probably choose the smaller one because it would free up my time more than the other,
00:03:49.080 | especially if I didn't have a use for it. I weren't entertaining or having big parties,
00:03:52.640 | things like that. What's the point of having three bedrooms that sit empty all the time
00:03:56.080 | if I can't use them? Now, on the flip side, at the stage of life that I'm at right now
00:04:00.880 | where I have children and they need places to be and we do all kinds of things from our
00:04:07.040 | house, I work from my house, we do school at our house, my children play in our house,
00:04:12.720 | we entertain in our house, et cetera. I'm at a phase of life right now where having
00:04:17.560 | a smaller house or a very small house would really be a burden and it would really substantially
00:04:23.800 | reduce the quality of life. Ask me how I know? Well, I lived in an RV last year for six months.
00:04:31.800 | And the great thing about the RV was that we could constantly move the location, but
00:04:35.920 | it certainly convinced me that although it might look nice on a TV show or might look
00:04:40.440 | nice on a YouTube video, living in a small RV with many young children is not great for
00:04:45.360 | the long term. So I'm at a phase of life where a bigger house is more valuable. The point
00:04:50.880 | is these things will change as time goes on. I expect that there will be a point in time
00:04:55.040 | where I'll go back to valuing a smaller house. Now, what about where that house is located?
00:05:00.720 | There is a time in most of our lives, especially when we're young, that we really want to be
00:05:04.760 | in the middle of the action. Most young people, especially if they're single, want to be in
00:05:09.120 | the middle of the city. And so there, a small apartment in the middle of a city has a very
00:05:13.520 | high quality of life appeal for many people. Whereas you get a little bit older, you have
00:05:19.480 | children and all of a sudden now you don't really feel like going out and partying on
00:05:23.160 | Thursday night and you'd rather be where it's quieter, you'd rather be where you have some
00:05:26.840 | space. These are natural cycles that people go through. You choose what you like, but
00:05:32.360 | they change over time. If you have to choose between cost of living and quality of life,
00:05:39.120 | I think your optimal choice should prioritize quality of life because you can always adjust
00:05:45.840 | for costs. As we talk about the costs here in a moment, and I go through all of the different
00:05:52.480 | categories that I think people think about or should think about when they're considering
00:05:57.200 | an international relocation, what you'll see is that it's really a mixed bag. There are
00:06:01.880 | different costs that are high at different times of life. So you might pay more to live
00:06:06.640 | in the middle of the city. But if you like being in the middle of the city, perhaps there
00:06:09.960 | are so many interesting events available, free events, cultural things, shows, expeditions,
00:06:18.360 | all kinds of things available for you just at your fingertips that you make up what you
00:06:22.200 | spend in rent payments with savings on entertainment. Whereas if you lived out in the country, you're
00:06:27.640 | always driving into town, etc. Now if you like being in the country, your entertainment
00:06:31.920 | might be hanging out in the woods and that's much cheaper for you than buying $12 martinis
00:06:37.760 | and buying tickets to the latest greatest show, etc. So if you prioritize the things
00:06:43.620 | that are important to you, your quality of life, you can figure out how to adjust the
00:06:48.200 | costs in almost any budget to fit what you were looking for at a certain phase of your
00:06:53.960 | life. The point here of my introduction is you will have to make these assessments in
00:07:02.120 | your life even if you're going to live in the place where you were born and raised.
00:07:06.940 | You make these assessments in terms of city versus suburbs versus country. You make these
00:07:12.280 | assessments in terms of which part of the state do you live in, which side of the highway
00:07:16.720 | do you live on, which side of the river do you live in, what elevation do you choose
00:07:21.400 | to live at, which state do you live in. These are all things that we face and we have to
00:07:26.800 | consider them from a personal perspective. Now from here on out, I'm going to focus on
00:07:30.640 | the international bent because I think that is something that many people do consider.
00:07:35.600 | Let's talk first about the costs. Actually, let's start with the costs. I think that
00:07:42.260 | living internationally in many ways is a mixed bag of costs. I think one of the oversold
00:07:50.800 | concepts in personal finance is if you want to save money, you should move to a country
00:07:58.000 | that is cheap. I think that can work in some cases, but it probably won't work in most
00:08:05.800 | cases because although you might reduce costs in one area, you'll often raise them in another.
00:08:14.320 | So let's talk through some different factors of costs and I'll try to tackle these in order
00:08:18.760 | of biggest cost to littlest as far as for the most of us, for our average budgets. The
00:08:24.280 | first biggest expense that most of us have is tax, most importantly income tax and by
00:08:31.900 | extent employment tax. That is for most of us the single biggest category of our expenditures.
00:08:39.240 | It may not be for you if you don't earn very much money, but if you earn anything above
00:08:44.900 | the median income, which in the United States is something like $60,000 per year, in that
00:08:50.800 | range anything north of $60,000 a year and that is by far the majority of the radical
00:08:56.400 | personal finance listening audiences and far in excess of six figures, very often multi
00:09:01.080 | six figures, your single biggest cost is tax, income tax. The way that you can know if this
00:09:08.320 | is true for you or not is to actually calculate the number. I did this with a consulting client
00:09:13.160 | recently, husband, wife, both well employed professional workers, each earning a six figure
00:09:19.040 | salary and I had them sit down and calculate their cost of tax. And the way you do it,
00:09:24.400 | pull out your federal income tax return for the most recent calendar year, pull out your
00:09:29.320 | state income tax return for the most recent calendar year and calculate your employment
00:09:35.160 | taxes, which you can perhaps find on your W-2 or you can just simply calculate them.
00:09:40.660 | If you are an employee, you will be 7.65% up to the social security wage base. That
00:09:45.720 | is your contribution to the employment taxes in the United States or 15.3% up to the social
00:09:50.560 | security wage base, which is ish $120,000 ish. So if you calculate that on your income,
00:09:58.080 | you'll know what your total cost of tax is. If you live in a city that imposes city
00:10:02.720 | income taxes, do that as well. But if you total those three together, federal income
00:10:07.440 | taxes, state income taxes, employment taxes, and I guess if you pay city taxes, which is
00:10:11.960 | not common, if you pay city income taxes, calculate that as well. If you total those
00:10:16.280 | together, then you'll know your total cost of tax. And it is my bet that that number
00:10:21.600 | for you, as long as you're earning above the median income, that number for you will
00:10:25.080 | be the single largest category expense in your household budget. Don't forget about
00:10:31.600 | your Medicare surcharge tax, etc. on higher numbers, but let's just stick with those
00:10:35.280 | simple ones. Can you affect taxes by moving abroad? Absolutely. In my opinion, that, taxes,
00:10:47.480 | is one of the biggest potential savings of moving abroad. If you are moving to a tax-efficient
00:10:55.600 | location, if you're moving from being a full-time resident of the United States to being a full-time
00:11:02.160 | resident of France, you're not going to save on taxes. If you're moving from Great Britain
00:11:07.280 | to Canada, you're not going to save on taxes. But if you are moving in a tax-optimized way,
00:11:13.660 | to a tax haven, or if you are structuring your life in a way that you move to a place
00:11:17.760 | that's very tax-efficient for you, you can save dramatic amounts of money by moving thoughtfully
00:11:25.180 | and carefully. And that can be a huge, huge benefit, especially a benefit at different
00:11:31.020 | points of your life. Now, where is this more important? Here's where there's a big difference
00:11:37.800 | between talking to a Brit versus talking to a US American. For an American, the biggest
00:11:43.760 | savings on taxes by moving abroad is on income taxes, on your earned income. So if you're
00:11:51.560 | in a period of time where you're going to have high earned income, you can make dramatic
00:11:56.540 | improvements in your life and your lifestyle and your cost of living by moving thoughtfully.
00:12:02.640 | Whereas if you're in a phase where you're earning a lot of investment income, it's a
00:12:05.440 | little bit more difficult. Now, if you're going to be experiencing large capital gains
00:12:10.120 | in your life, you can adjust for that. There are different ways that you can do it. And
00:12:14.360 | we've talked about that in various internationalization shows. My point is that moving internationally,
00:12:19.800 | moving abroad, can make a major difference in your costs of living. Now, how does your
00:12:25.200 | cost of living affect your quality of life? Depends on what's important to you. Give you
00:12:29.520 | an example. Let's say that you want to work in the financial space and you want to be
00:12:33.320 | a banker and you're considering taking a job working as a banker in New York City or you're
00:12:38.920 | taking considering taking a job working as a banker in London or you're considering taking
00:12:43.560 | a job working as a banker in Dubai. How is your cost of living going to change in those
00:12:51.840 | scenarios? Well, in many ways, New York City and London are very similar. You're going
00:12:57.640 | to have a very high cost of housing. You're going to have high built-in costs for food,
00:13:03.920 | etc., because of living in the city. And you're going to have very high costs of taxation.
00:13:08.680 | Now, you could probably live in London a little bit more efficiently than in New York City,
00:13:12.840 | depending on how you're structuring things. But in both cases, you're going to pay a lot
00:13:16.040 | of income tax, especially if you're having earned income as a banker. New York City,
00:13:20.520 | US federal income taxes, New York State and New York City income taxes. London, same thing.
00:13:26.840 | Dubai, no income taxes. No income taxes, too. Dubai doesn't tax income. So if you're going
00:13:32.280 | to earn a salary of three, four, five hundred thousand dollars per year, and you can structure
00:13:37.200 | things so that you either pay income taxes on three, four, five hundred thousand dollars
00:13:41.080 | a year, or you don't pay income taxes on three or four or five hundred thousand dollars per
00:13:45.160 | year, there's major benefits for you in choosing Dubai over New York City or London. What about
00:13:52.640 | quality of life? Is your quality of life substantially different in any of those locations?
00:13:56.680 | They all, you can get along great with English. They're all bustling modern cities. You can
00:14:01.200 | make an argument that Dubai is nicer, more modern than some of the others. You have certainly
00:14:07.400 | interesting cultural mixes, all of them very cosmopolitan, cultural melting pots of cultures.
00:14:14.600 | Your lifestyle in all of them is going to be substantially similar. You're going to
00:14:18.240 | go to big city parties. You're going to have, it's going to be about the same quality of
00:14:23.280 | life is the point. You're probably going to send your children to private schools in any
00:14:27.840 | of those contexts, especially if you're a banker. In one case, choosing an international
00:14:32.240 | school versus just a Tony local private school that doesn't bill itself as an international
00:14:36.640 | school. But in many ways, just about everything in your life will look the same. The weather
00:14:40.040 | might be a little bit different, that is clear, but you're a banker. You're spending most
00:14:44.360 | of your time indoors anyway. So how does that impact you? So you can have the same virtually,
00:14:50.360 | the same quality of life with a much lower cost of living by living and choosing to live
00:14:55.160 | in Dubai instead of choosing to live in New York City, unless it affects something else.
00:15:01.440 | For example, let's say that all of your family is on Long Island and that's where all your
00:15:06.860 | heritage is. Well, it's a little more difficult for you now to justify living in Dubai when
00:15:12.980 | it's an expensive international airplane ticket for you to get to Long Island instead of just
00:15:17.280 | a little time driving out. So that's where other things have to come into account. But
00:15:25.600 | I think taxes are probably one of the major things, especially this audience does need
00:15:29.840 | to consider. If you live and work in a tax haven, you can do very well and you can achieve
00:15:36.460 | your goals much more quickly than if you live and work in a place that imposes high levels
00:15:42.400 | of taxation. That assumes, of course, that you can be as well employed living and working
00:15:49.540 | in the tax haven as you can living and working elsewhere. For example, you could live and
00:15:55.900 | work in New York City and do very well because there are massive career options available
00:16:00.140 | for you. You could live and work in Vanuatu. Your career options are much more limited
00:16:07.120 | in Vanuatu than they are in New York City. So now your cost of living, then you have
00:16:12.960 | to count in your opportunity cost. If you live in the tax haven but you don't have career
00:16:16.660 | options available for you, it might not work out so well. Next biggest expense category
00:16:21.040 | is usually for most people, housing. In my opinion, the cost of housing can really be
00:16:27.800 | a mixed bag in terms of how it compares internationally. The biggest cost of housing will largely be
00:16:36.740 | based upon are you living in an urban context or a non-urban context. It costs more to live
00:16:44.000 | in the city center than it does to live outside of the city center. It also costs more to
00:16:50.520 | be in a major city center than it does to be in a minor city center. So if you're looking
00:16:56.780 | to live in a little bit of the downtown environment, you like the nightlife, you like the cultural
00:17:02.120 | activities, etc. But you don't have to live in downtown Hong Kong. You can save money
00:17:08.560 | by not living in downtown Hong Kong but just by simply living in another city that still
00:17:15.800 | has that urban environment but is not quite so expensive. Perhaps you enjoy living in
00:17:21.240 | downtown Prague and that gives you what you're looking for without having the astronomical
00:17:25.600 | costs of downtown Hong Kong or downtown Singapore, etc. So the cost of housing can change based
00:17:31.240 | upon location. But a lot of times when people talk about saving money on housing, they're
00:17:36.000 | often looking to save money on housing by going to a country where things are perceived
00:17:43.200 | to be cheaper. Again, it is true that things are cheaper in some big cities than others.
00:17:48.600 | But a lot of times I think the savings on housing are often oversold. In my opinion,
00:17:53.440 | a lot of times the biggest difference in the cost of housing comes to the quality of the
00:17:58.000 | housing. For example, in the United States, there are certain things that are considered
00:18:01.600 | standard that almost every house or apartment, including the cheapest of the houses and apartments,
00:18:07.320 | will have. Things like hot water in the house. The whole house will be plumbed for hot water.
00:18:12.220 | Or perhaps central heating or central air conditioning. Those things are more and more
00:18:16.800 | considered to be standard in the United States. But if you go to a place where housing is
00:18:21.280 | cheaper, you'll find that they're usually not standard. Your hot water might be limited
00:18:25.760 | to a shower head. Your shower might have an electric hot water heater in it that heats
00:18:30.840 | the water for your shower, but your whole house doesn't have hot water. And central
00:18:35.280 | heating, central cooling, etc. is not standard. Rather, if you have any air conditioning at
00:18:40.200 | all, you have just a small window unit in your bedroom. Things like that. Those account
00:18:44.600 | for a large portion of the savings. I think that yes, you can save money on housing. You
00:18:50.800 | can save money on rent by going abroad. And you might like that. But a lot of times the
00:18:56.160 | savings on housing come to accepting lower standards of housing. And if you are willing
00:19:01.160 | to accept lower standards of housing, you could live equally inexpensively in the United
00:19:05.960 | States than going abroad, for example. Very few of us choose to live in pre-manufactured
00:19:12.680 | housing or a mobile home or an RV, etc. But in many ways, you could argue that a nice
00:19:18.960 | single wide modern trailer living in is more comfortable and is better built than a beachside
00:19:25.480 | shack in Belize. The beachside shack in Belize might be inexpensive, but at the end of the
00:19:30.240 | day, it's kind of a hovel. Whereas you can have a modern single wide trailer for a few
00:19:35.280 | hundred dollars a month on your loan payment or you can rent one for a few hundred dollars
00:19:40.400 | a month and have just as comfortable of housing. It doesn't have the same romance. It's a lot
00:19:45.960 | easier for you to say, "Okay, well, I'm willing to lower my standards because I'm living in
00:19:49.760 | Belize." It's very hard for somebody to be willing to move from the big city in the United
00:19:54.680 | States and downsize and downgrade their lifestyle in the United States because their friends
00:19:59.200 | all see that, etc. They can move to the beachside shack in Belize and say, "Look, I'm living
00:20:03.280 | in Belize. This is what's available." And that might be one consideration. But housing,
00:20:08.020 | you don't necessarily have to move abroad to save money on housing. You can move to
00:20:12.840 | Mississippi. You can move to a trailer. And you can save a lot of money on housing in
00:20:18.120 | these contexts. It might not provide you with what you want. For example, if you want to
00:20:21.680 | be on the Caribbean, Belize might be what you're looking for. But it might be cheaper
00:20:26.160 | than Fort Myers. But it is available in the United States. It's just most people don't
00:20:32.360 | see it. So yes, can you save money on housing? Probably. But it's probably because of a downgrade
00:20:38.560 | of basic standards than necessarily a major difference in the location. Obviously, there
00:20:45.880 | can be exceptions to that. Obviously, places do sell for cheaper in some places than another.
00:20:51.940 | What I would recommend to you if you're interested in kind of getting a sense of the cost of
00:20:55.240 | different places, in my opinion, Airbnb is the single best tool for you to get a sense
00:21:01.240 | of what different locations actually cost. What I like to do if I'm trying to figure
00:21:07.000 | out the cost of one place versus another is I like to use Airbnb. And I like to look for
00:21:11.640 | monthly rentals. Because when you rent, you can, of course, find local rentals in a newspaper.
00:21:18.760 | You can find local real estate things, et cetera. But those are hard to find. And they're
00:21:23.280 | a little bit inefficient. But if you use the Airbnb website, and you look for a monthly
00:21:27.680 | rental, and you search different locations, you'll find things that are ready to go. You'll
00:21:33.220 | find things that you can actually rent right there. A couple of clicks, put in your credit
00:21:36.760 | card, bada bing, bada bam. Why am I saying that ridiculous cliche, bada bing, bada bam,
00:21:41.000 | bada boom? I don't know why that came out of my mouth. You can click, and you can reserve
00:21:48.280 | something right there, right now. Whereas searching through real estate listings, you
00:21:52.600 | don't know what the true cost is of the utilities. You don't know what the true cost is of the
00:21:57.320 | taxes or what your deposit is, et cetera. Airbnb is really good.
00:22:02.760 | And what you'll see when you do that is, yes, there is a distinction of different places.
00:22:10.920 | Renting a three-bedroom apartment in downtown Asuncion is a lot cheaper than renting a
00:22:16.000 | three-bedroom apartment in downtown Miami. It is. But you can find three-bedrooms places
00:22:26.120 | in Florida, and just go up into North Florida or Central Florida. You can find places that
00:22:31.600 | are not that much more than downtown Asuncion. So hopefully that helps you to get the point
00:22:37.820 | of what I'm saying is, yes, they are out there, and you can save money on housing. So if you
00:22:42.200 | want to live the downtown lifestyle, consider it, and use Airbnb as your best, truest representation
00:22:47.320 | of what market rates actually are. Super competitive marketplace, really good to help you understand
00:22:53.240 | the costs of housing.
00:22:55.200 | Next big category for some people is insurance. And usually this is health insurance. And
00:23:01.640 | so I'm going to pair together insurance or health care. The insurance can include health
00:23:05.600 | insurance, can include car insurance, other kinds of insurance, but a lot of times it's
00:23:09.560 | health insurance. Now here's where there's going to be a big difference for you based
00:23:13.500 | upon the place that you choose to be and what your income level is. If your income is low
00:23:20.680 | and you can buy inexpensive health insurance, whether it's subsidized in the United States
00:23:25.200 | or whether it's some kind of government run system in another country, then you can save
00:23:29.440 | a lot of money on insurance by moving somewhere else.
00:23:32.420 | So if you want to live in a place where insurance and health care is provided by the government
00:23:40.360 | instead of paying it for yourself, you can do that and you can save money there. It probably
00:23:45.160 | won't work out for you well if your income is high. If your income is high, you're probably
00:23:49.280 | better off just simply paying for it out of pocket. But here's where I do think people
00:23:54.320 | who consider moving outside of the United States can sometimes get a better deal. If
00:23:58.800 | you're a low income earner, then sometimes moving to a place that has government run
00:24:03.960 | health insurance programs, etc., can allow you to access medical care without so much
00:24:10.080 | money coming out of pocket. And because you're a low income earner, all of the high income
00:24:14.840 | earners that do pay taxes in that place are subsidizing your individual situation.
00:24:19.920 | I recently spoke with a retiree who had moved outside of the United States and we were talking
00:24:23.360 | about their budget and I was trying to get it. They'd moved from Wisconsin to a low cost
00:24:28.640 | place. And I was talking with them outside of the United States. I was talking about
00:24:32.840 | what they missed, what they liked, etc. And basically this came out as their number one
00:24:38.800 | cost savings. It was their number one thing, was health care. And in their case, they were
00:24:42.960 | using doctors and then they were also looking forward to benefiting from things like long
00:24:47.840 | term care providers.
00:24:49.200 | I've seen a number of interesting new resorts and retirement communities that have been
00:24:53.920 | opening up throughout Asia. And one of the big selling points is they're basically like
00:24:57.920 | a continuing care retirement community in the United States, but just in an Asian context.
00:25:03.360 | And when you get into the world of long term care or continuing care retirement community,
00:25:07.780 | one of your biggest expenses is labor costs. And one place where you can save massive amounts
00:25:12.940 | of money is if you're dealing with something that involves labor costs by moving outside
00:25:17.760 | the United States. So you can buy a membership in Thailand and in a continuing care retirement
00:25:23.400 | community basically in Thailand, all inclusive resort, everything's there. But they promise
00:25:27.760 | 24 hour nursing care as you age and if you need health care. And it is far, far cheaper
00:25:32.600 | than buying the same thing in the United States because the labor costs are much, much lower.
00:25:37.400 | Labor costs in the United States, of course, being extremely high. So for certain people,
00:25:42.480 | the cost savings on insurance and health care can be really substantial. But you may not
00:25:47.800 | necessarily benefit from those if you're not in a phase of life where you need much insurance
00:25:52.580 | or need much medical care. And so you would have to judge accordingly. You should also
00:25:57.820 | remember, of course, that you can access some of the lower cost health care regard without
00:26:02.240 | actually moving to a place just by engaging in medical tourism. I think medical tourism
00:26:07.480 | is going to be one of the great growth industries of the future. People just simply choosing
00:26:11.040 | to go to another place to have their medical procedures done. So whether you're going to
00:26:15.680 | Costa Rica to have dental care done or whether you're going to Brazil to have plastic surgery
00:26:21.440 | or whether you're going to Mexico to have cancer treatment or whatever it is, you can
00:26:26.240 | save massive amounts of money by engaging in medical tourism. What about transportation?
00:26:32.000 | Well transportation could be a mixed bag. First, you can move to many countries outside
00:26:37.280 | of the United States where transportation is cheaper. But of course, you can move to
00:26:41.780 | places where it's more expensive. I know that doesn't help you, but for me just to say that.
00:26:46.840 | But bus tickets, many places have just better built out transportation options where you
00:26:52.640 | can get by on the public transportation system. And by working on the public transportation
00:26:58.080 | system, you can eliminate the need for owning a car in and of itself. You can't do that
00:27:04.440 | in many cities in the United States. You know, Hot Springs, Arkansas is a nice place, but
00:27:10.920 | the public transportation system is not as efficient as the public transportation system
00:27:15.480 | in Bogota. So judge for yourself. Do you save and lower your cost of living by moving to
00:27:21.800 | a place where there is a lower cost of transportation by having a local infrastructure of public
00:27:28.560 | transportation? That might be something to consider. If you're talking about transportation
00:27:32.440 | in terms of private transportation, I really don't think there's any place in the world
00:27:36.520 | that's cheaper to own an automobile than in the United States. And that's where I think
00:27:42.320 | there's a major benefit for the United States. If you want to buy a car, own a car, operate
00:27:47.360 | a car, I haven't done any research, but I've never personally been to a place where it's
00:27:52.920 | cheaper than doing it in the United States. And there are a few reasons for this. So first,
00:27:57.720 | it's easy to buy cheap quality automobiles in the United States. Because there's so many
00:28:04.560 | people with high incomes who are constantly purchasing new automobiles, the used automobile
00:28:09.280 | marketplace in the United States is stronger and better than the used automobile marketplace
00:28:14.880 | in any place that I've ever been. You can find awesome vehicles, three years old, four
00:28:20.280 | years old, 10 years old, all day long, every day at every single dealership. They're great
00:28:25.600 | cars, they've cut in half, they've dropped a third or 50% off of their new car price,
00:28:31.160 | and they're available and they'll serve you for a decade or more. And they're cheap to
00:28:34.600 | buy. Because the new market is so competitive, and because there's so many cars, it creates
00:28:39.320 | this really robust used market. That doesn't exist in many corners of the world. In many
00:28:43.640 | corners of the world, the new market is not nearly so strong, and thus the used market
00:28:48.240 | is not nearly so strong. And so you can't apply all of the same analysis that you would
00:28:52.280 | apply in the United States to, should I buy a new or used car, to your situation in many
00:28:56.960 | other places. So cars are cheap to buy in the United States. Cars are cheap to run in
00:29:02.240 | the United States. Gas prices are very low compared to many places in the world. They're
00:29:09.240 | not as low as they could be, but they're very low compared to many places in the world.
00:29:12.720 | Not everywhere, but many places in the world. In addition to that, all the other costs,
00:29:17.400 | costs of insurance, relatively low. Now that'll vary a lot depending on where you live. For
00:29:21.800 | example, cost of car insurance in downtown Miami, brutally high. Cost of car insurance
00:29:27.240 | in Orlando, way, way lower. So you consider things like that when you're trying to choose
00:29:31.280 | between Miami and Orlando. Cost of registering a vehicle. In the United States, there are
00:29:36.280 | extremely low taxes generally. Yes, you have to deal with some sales tax with your local
00:29:40.480 | state, but you can dramatically reduce your sales tax by buying a cheaper car and/or living
00:29:46.440 | in a state that doesn't impose sales tax, but buying a cheaper car. And then the cost
00:29:50.480 | of registering it, getting your license plate, things like that, very, very cheap. Cost of
00:29:54.440 | owning a car, cost of tires, cost of oil, all that stuff in the United States is cheap,
00:29:58.680 | cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap compared to most places in the world. So if your ideal living
00:30:04.920 | involves a lot of transportation or a lot of transportation costs, you're not going
00:30:08.440 | to save money on that. So if you want to go and be able to live on the bus and ride the
00:30:13.400 | bus and take the tuk-tuk and travel around with whatever's available and you don't mind
00:30:19.720 | riding a tap-tap instead of actually having your own vehicle, then fine. But if it's important
00:30:24.960 | to you to drive your own vehicle and that's a big deal for you, you're going to pay a
00:30:28.160 | lot more in almost every place I've been than the United States.
00:30:31.920 | What about food? Food is an interesting mix because everywhere in the world you can find
00:30:37.320 | and buy basic staples relatively inexpensively. I don't see how a country can stay out of
00:30:44.000 | political and civil unrest if food prices are not modest. And so for basic staples,
00:30:50.160 | I mean the cost of rice, the cost of wheat, the cost of basic vegetables, those things
00:30:54.360 | are basically low all over the world. When you start to get into packaged goods, in my
00:30:59.120 | experience packaged goods are a lot cheaper in the United States than almost anywhere
00:31:03.040 | else. Part of that is due to lower taxations, no VAT tax, modest sales taxes, and part of
00:31:11.080 | it is just due to competition with things like packaged foods. The United States lives
00:31:14.360 | on packaged foods. And so you can buy all of that packaged stuff much more cheaply in
00:31:19.920 | the United States than almost anywhere else in the world. So you can eat inexpensively
00:31:26.000 | on food prices if you're cooking your own anywhere in the world. But when it comes to
00:31:29.880 | packaged foods, I think the United States has a much cheaper cost of living than again
00:31:33.480 | almost any place that I have been.
00:31:35.840 | Now when you move to restaurants and restaurant food, that is where you can have a dramatic
00:31:41.000 | difference in cost. Restaurant prices in the United States are modest. They're not nearly
00:31:45.760 | as high as many regions of the world, but they're much, much higher than some of the
00:31:49.360 | well-known cheaper regions of the world. There are places in the world where it just makes
00:31:54.280 | more sense for many people to go out to eat for most of their meals instead of cooking
00:31:58.240 | themselves. That is not the case in the United States. It is the case in even in some expensive
00:32:03.240 | places, Hong Kong or Asia, many parts of Asia. And that partly then goes back to the cost
00:32:08.720 | of labor. Cost of labor, high in the United States. Cost of labor, low in some corners
00:32:14.600 | of Asia. And so you can, if you want to eat out a lot, you can gain substantially by going
00:32:20.760 | to an inexpensive corner of the world where you can get a great meal for a few dollars.
00:32:24.960 | Whether that's taco stand in Mexico or a noodle shop in Bangkok, wherever you wind up, there
00:32:31.780 | are ways that you can save massively on the cost of dining out. Other things associated
00:32:37.240 | with food, it's really a mixed bag. Things like alcohol varies in region. So you'd have
00:32:42.280 | to judge from there. What about cost of things like domestic help? Hiring housekeepers, maids,
00:32:50.240 | cooks, nannies, things like that. This is an area where I think moving abroad brings
00:32:55.560 | a lot of value. A lot of value by being able to hire domestic help much more cheaply, to
00:33:02.280 | hire servants to work for you much more cheaply. In the United States, with the relatively
00:33:07.540 | high labor costs, hiring full-time servants is basically a rich man's game. It's an unusual
00:33:14.420 | middle class person who has a full-time housekeeper, who has a full-time nanny. That's basically
00:33:20.740 | a rich man's game in the United States. Now to compensate for that, you can find all kinds
00:33:25.840 | of people who do great work for you on a contractual basis. You can find someone who will come
00:33:29.900 | and clean your house two hours a week. Most people don't need more than that. In addition,
00:33:35.820 | you can also find lots of great electric servants who will work for you. There's a reason why
00:33:43.020 | washing machines and robot vacuums and all those kinds of things can make a big difference.
00:33:47.920 | But if your life would be improved by having a lot of domestic help, you can have major
00:33:52.660 | savings by living in other places. This is, I think, one of those things that most Americans
00:33:57.320 | don't really think about until they start to experience it. If you live in Fiji, as
00:34:04.960 | a middle class person, you can afford to hire a full-time housekeeper. You can afford to
00:34:08.600 | hire a cook, the housekeeper cooks often for you. I find this one of the major benefits
00:34:14.720 | of living outside of the United States, especially at the phase that my wife and I are in with
00:34:20.000 | many young children. It's extremely helpful for her and me not to have to do anything.
00:34:25.560 | Sorry, not to have to do everything. We still do plenty, trust me. But not to have to do
00:34:29.400 | everything. So that can be a major benefit for you at some phases of your life. Now,
00:34:34.940 | on the other hand, there can be a phase of your life you don't need somebody to clean
00:34:37.860 | your house. If you have a little apartment, why do you need someone to come out and be
00:34:40.860 | there full-time working for you? And so in that case, just save the money and get a Roomba.
00:34:49.000 | And that may be all that you need.
00:34:51.480 | What about other things, purchases, things like furniture, electronics, etc.? My experience,
00:34:57.160 | those things are far cheaper in the United States than almost anywhere else. In the United
00:35:01.380 | States, you can get great, well, first, back to the markets, you can get great stuff for
00:35:05.120 | free all day, every day in the United States, just off the side of the road. Because the
00:35:09.520 | new market is so healthy, and there's so many people buying new things, it creates this
00:35:15.160 | really robust throwaway market, and there's really robust used market in the United States.
00:35:21.040 | You can furnish your house for a few dollars and furnish it very well. You can equip your
00:35:25.520 | house with plenty of working great electronics off the side of the road, or for a few dollars
00:35:30.700 | from any of the secondhand shops or yard sales, Craigslist, etc. And so you can buy those
00:35:35.940 | things in the United States far cheaper than anywhere that I personally have been. Back
00:35:39.800 | again, no VAT tax, relatively modest sales taxes, keep those costs extremely low in the
00:35:46.240 | United States.
00:35:47.640 | My experience, many corners of the world, they're much, much more expensive. You look
00:35:51.520 | at a nice living room set in the United States, be much cheaper than a nice living room set
00:35:56.000 | in Panama City. It's just a big, big difference there. Things like education should be considered.
00:36:03.880 | Now your cost of education would vary. Is it talking about your education, in which
00:36:08.260 | case a decent internet connection is available, really in most parts of the world at this
00:36:12.400 | point in time, many parts of the world at this point in time. Cost of books, it doesn't
00:36:17.340 | get any cheaper to buy used books than Amazon in the United States. One of the best things
00:36:21.480 | about the United States is used books on Amazon, you go on there, boom, $2, $3, $4, you can
00:36:26.880 | get almost any book shipped right to your house ready to go for you. So that can be
00:36:31.700 | a major, major savings.
00:36:33.400 | Now on the flip side, what if you're trying to figure out how to pay for something like
00:36:38.440 | university education? Well, there are many ways to do it very inexpensively in the United
00:36:43.280 | States, lots of great ways, but not really at the higher end, not at the prestigious
00:36:48.220 | schools, et cetera, the prestigious private schools. But you can, any American can move
00:36:53.640 | to Germany and go to school in Germany at the German public universities and not pay
00:36:58.960 | a dime out of pocket for the cost of tuition. And so perhaps there, moving to Germany is
00:37:06.160 | much better idea for you to go to the government universities in Germany and not pay anything
00:37:11.240 | than trying to figure out how to come up with $40,000 to pay for private school tuition
00:37:15.840 | in Connecticut. So those would be some examples of the cost of living.
00:37:20.560 | All in all, I think that, hope that what you heard is it's really a mixed bag and that
00:37:25.720 | there are some categories that are much cheaper in the United States and there are some categories
00:37:29.640 | that are much more expensive in the United States. And a lot of this depends on where
00:37:34.360 | you are in your life. For me right now, at the phase of life that I'm in, I'm enjoying
00:37:41.600 | lower taxes by living abroad, which because I'm in years of high earned income, that's
00:37:48.560 | a major benefit to me as having lower taxes. And I'm enjoying lower cost of domestic
00:37:55.520 | help. That's a major benefit for me because it helps my wife and me to be able to keep
00:38:00.560 | our household in order to provide the things that we need for our children, et cetera,
00:38:05.600 | so that I can be free and she can be free to do the things that we need to do. Those
00:38:09.720 | are big benefits. A lot of the other things come out in the wash. Housing, I save a little
00:38:14.160 | bit of money on housing, but not much. A lot of other things are more expensive.
00:38:18.120 | Now fast forward to a different phase in life. Let's say I go into a phase of life where
00:38:21.720 | I'm not having high earned income. Well, now the tax savings on earned income are not nearly
00:38:27.400 | so compelling, in which case, and let's say that I'm also at a phase where I just don't
00:38:31.720 | really need any domestic help. I don't want household servants in my house when my children
00:38:37.280 | are of an age where they are capable of doing the household work. I would view that as being
00:38:42.120 | a negative thing for them to not learn how to work. And so now at a different phase of
00:38:46.560 | life, there could be a different region of the world would make a big, big difference.
00:38:50.280 | If I were a retiree, it's hard to imagine that I would just jump to move outside the
00:38:55.280 | United States. Knowing what I know, I would find a high quality of life in the United
00:38:59.720 | States in many cases.
00:39:01.640 | So let's pivot now to discussion of quality of life. Your quality of life will be subject
00:39:09.440 | to your individual circumstances. There are a lot of things that people don't really think
00:39:14.000 | about and they really should. For example, something like sunshine. I'm used to growing
00:39:21.120 | up. I grew up in the sunshine state. And so I don't think a lot about sunshine, but from
00:39:26.440 | moving around and talking to people, I have learned that this is a big deal and your quality
00:39:30.940 | of life can be dramatically improved by living in a place where there is a lot of sunshine.
00:39:37.520 | So if you're living in Toronto or you're living in Seattle, one of the biggest quality of
00:39:44.400 | life improvements for you of moving to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico might just simply be the
00:39:50.480 | exposure to sunshine. And yes, you pay a little bit less in housing. Yes, that's nice. And
00:39:56.080 | you don't really worry too much about the income taxes are high in Mexico, but at least
00:40:00.280 | you get access to a lot of sunshine. That's really, really useful. And so that could be
00:40:04.280 | a major quality of life improvement that would be unique to you and it's worth your considering.
00:40:10.240 | Other major improvements of quality of life, things like traffic. Some places have horrendous
00:40:15.300 | traffic and if you just simply move from a place that has horrendous traffic to a place
00:40:19.700 | that doesn't have horrendous traffic, that can be a major quality of life improvement.
00:40:24.180 | You should consider that. But then we get to things like culture. Do you like the culture
00:40:29.640 | that you live in? And I think here you should be very slow to move outside of your home
00:40:35.560 | culture unless you really don't like your home culture or unless you really are more
00:40:40.400 | comfortable in another place. The cultural stuff is a big deal. Now you can find a lot
00:40:46.440 | of cultural sense of belonging, a sense of fitting in, in expat communities all around
00:40:52.120 | the world. You'll find expat communities of people from your home country and you'll be
00:40:56.680 | able to share many things together. I recently celebrated a 4th of July Independence Day
00:41:02.840 | celebration with a bunch of expat Americans. But the culture stuff makes a big, big difference.
00:41:10.600 | There's a big difference between being part of a small group of people from your home
00:41:14.120 | culture than being in your home culture. And I think a lot about this. I try to understand
00:41:21.880 | what things do I like about the US American culture and different expressions of US American
00:41:26.400 | culture versus what things do I not like, what things do I like more about other cultures.
00:41:31.000 | And that's going to be an intensely subjective process for you. It's going to be an intensely
00:41:36.600 | personal thing, depending again on what you like and what you don't like. But your quality
00:41:42.000 | of life might be dramatically improved by moving abroad or it might be dramatically
00:41:46.400 | made, dramatically worse. I think there are other things. For example, a sense of adventure,
00:41:53.440 | a sense of adventure. You might enjoy the challenge of living in a new place. It's
00:41:58.480 | kind of fun to have the challenge of figuring out how do I get the lights turned on and
00:42:02.600 | how do I get something delivered from the internet and how do I figure out how to do
00:42:07.120 | this thing with the immigration department. It adds to a sense of adventure and that can
00:42:11.000 | be really, really, really fun. So you'll have to think about your things in terms of
00:42:17.000 | your quality of life. I believe that depending on what we're talking about, there could
00:42:24.480 | be dramatic improvements for some people outside of their home country, but it's probably
00:42:32.200 | not the first place to start. I think in general that sense of cultural belonging is a big
00:42:40.320 | deal and it's hard to ever really feel quite so much at home in a place that's not where
00:42:46.360 | you grew up. I don't know if it can be overcome. I interview a lot of expats. I ask them. I
00:42:51.680 | kind of think about this stuff and you have to like the culture I think that you're going
00:42:56.160 | into. For some people, it'll work out. Some people, they'd prefer to be at home. I don't
00:43:03.240 | mean for this entire show to sound wishy-washy, to not give a clear answer that, "Well, it's
00:43:08.280 | just far better in Panama than it is anywhere else." No, it's not. It's a mixed bag. So
00:43:14.080 | I think that you will have to consider what are the things that you are looking for. I
00:43:19.680 | don't know how long I'll be outside of the United States. A lot of that will depend on
00:43:22.640 | what happens in the United States in the next few years. I didn't leave intending to be
00:43:27.880 | out forever. We'll see what happens in the next few years in the United States, whether
00:43:32.680 | I stay out for the long term or whether I come back. I miss the United States. Last
00:43:38.160 | year, 4th of July last year, I was in Wamego, Kansas. Wamego or Wamego? Little itty-bitty
00:43:45.080 | town in Kansas, a couple hours west of Kansas City. And it has the longest running, I think
00:43:51.880 | their claim to fame is it's the longest running 4th of July Independence Day parade in the
00:43:57.200 | United States since something like the 1850s. And it was the perfect quintessential small
00:44:03.240 | town Independence Day experience. And I was so thrilled to be able to take my children,
00:44:10.600 | let them see the Independence Day parade and do the whole thing. And I loved every minute
00:44:15.520 | of it. Well, that was 4th of July, 2018. 4th of July, 2019, I was with a group of small
00:44:23.720 | group of American expats shooting off fireworks outside of the United States. And it just
00:44:29.840 | made me miss Wamego, Kansas. Wamego, I should look it up whether it's Wamego or Wamega.
00:44:36.000 | It made me miss Wamego, Kansas, because there's something really special about that small
00:44:42.120 | town flair. Now, I thought about living in Wamego, Kansas, but it doesn't seem to really
00:44:47.760 | fit me. It's not quite what I'm looking for. And so these things are hard to grapple with.
00:44:53.560 | Right now, most of what I, most of the reasons that I'm outside the United States have a
00:44:58.960 | lot to do with what happens five years from now, 10 years from now, and 35 years from
00:45:04.080 | now. Most of what I've been doing is intended to help my children in the long run. And it
00:45:08.720 | was a convenient time in my life to do some of this stuff. And I don't know, I don't know
00:45:12.840 | what happens. But I do know this, I have grown pretty frustrated with a lot of things in
00:45:19.520 | the United States over the past years. But yet, I can appreciate many things about the
00:45:27.040 | United States more, having been gone for a while now, than I did when I was living there.
00:45:33.840 | And it's really, there is no clear and easy answer. There might be a clear and easy answer
00:45:40.040 | for you, perhaps, if you're very, very strong in your thoughts. But I think for most of
00:45:45.480 | us, there probably isn't a clear and easy answer. There probably is more of a sense
00:45:51.360 | of some things that are helpful at a certain phase, and then you live life with an openness
00:46:02.200 | about the future and see what happens. If you're an American, I think you should consider
00:46:07.840 | going abroad at certain times of your life. For example, I think there are major benefits
00:46:13.220 | for a young person to go abroad while they're young, to travel first and foremost. But let's
00:46:19.720 | say you're starting a business, you're starting an internet business. Well, if you can get
00:46:24.320 | on an airplane and go to Thailand and be a part of the internet community in Chiang Mai,
00:46:31.560 | Thailand, where you can rent an inexpensive apartment for a few hundred dollars a month,
00:46:36.240 | you can eat all your meals out for a few dollars a day, and you can spend 80 hours a week working
00:46:42.160 | on your new business, your new online business, and you can simultaneously enjoy the benefits
00:46:48.520 | of limited taxation on your income, allows you to save a lot of money, and you can simultaneously
00:46:54.640 | enjoy the benefits of living in a beautiful tropical location and enjoying the beach and
00:46:58.720 | all of the adventure travel that comes with being there. I think that's a really powerful
00:47:03.760 | proposition. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. If you're like me and you're at a
00:47:07.440 | phase of life where you're going through certain things and you can benefit from some of these
00:47:13.880 | factors, then I think you can do that. You don't have to break up with your home country
00:47:19.640 | completely. You don't have to say, "Well, that's it. I'm going forever." A lot of people
00:47:24.280 | move abroad, find out they like it much better. A lot of people move abroad, find out they
00:47:29.600 | don't like it all that much. The answer of what's right or wrong will depend on you.
00:47:36.680 | I do think this. I think the United States has a very, very strong value proposition.
00:47:43.360 | I think it's a wonderful place to live. The labor market is extremely powerful. If you're
00:47:49.320 | simply willing to learn and willing to work, you can make a lot of money in the United
00:47:54.200 | States. We take that for granted, those of us who were born and raised in that environment.
00:48:00.760 | Every place I go, I look and say, "Well, how would I become a millionaire here?" It is
00:48:04.520 | so much easier for me to see how to do that in the United States than in almost anywhere
00:48:08.600 | else in the world. In many ways, the United States has very modest cost of taxation. Even
00:48:15.200 | the taxation can be low as long as you don't earn a lot of wages. It's not low if you have
00:48:20.560 | high wages, but if you restructure your life to make your wages very, very modest, then
00:48:29.280 | your cost of overall taxation can be relatively modest. It's not the lowest tax place in the
00:48:36.600 | world, but it's certainly not the highest tax place in the world. We'll see what the
00:48:40.720 | future holds.
00:48:42.120 | And then the cost of living in the United States can be dirt cheap. It really can be.
00:48:49.040 | Not if you're in the middle of some of the big cities. It's not. High cost of housing
00:48:53.120 | makes a big difference in those scenarios. But you can live inside the United States
00:49:01.240 | and get the benefits of lower cost of living by living outside the city center or in lower
00:49:05.800 | cost places to buy and build a house. You can get some of those benefits by adjusting
00:49:10.040 | the standards of what you're willing to put up with. I could today go to many portions
00:49:14.480 | of parts of the United States and build a house that would fit my family for $30,000.
00:49:19.320 | I've worked out the numbers on it. I could do it. Question is, do I want to? That's a
00:49:25.760 | different question, but I could do it. And I could build a nicer house for $30,000 than
00:49:30.600 | I could buy in many of the so-called cheaper places in the world. And when you get all
00:49:35.680 | the benefits of the cheap flow of goods and the resources just everywhere in the United
00:49:40.600 | States, the resources of the used market, et cetera, somebody who's thrifty, who's resourceful,
00:49:46.240 | who's willing to engage in that, there is so much just stuff everywhere that's not available
00:49:52.680 | in many other places in the rest of the world. So I think the USA has a very, very strong
00:49:59.560 | value proposition. I have some personal reservations of things I'm concerned that might change.
00:50:05.640 | I think they might change in the United States, and if they change, I won't be there. But
00:50:10.280 | time will tell. None of those things are in force today. So what's right for you? Obviously,
00:50:17.440 | think things through. Probably the only way you'll know is by trying it. I don't think
00:50:22.440 | that moving abroad is the answer to everything. I don't think that it automatically fits and
00:50:26.800 | lowers your cost of living and improves your quality of life necessarily. But I do think
00:50:31.560 | it is something that can and should be considered by most people as a way of improving your
00:50:38.240 | life and your lifestyle. It is possible to lower your cost of living and improve your
00:50:43.280 | quality of life if you're clear on what your personal costs of living are and you're clear
00:50:49.400 | on the things that you personally value in a high-quality lifestyle. I guess as I close
00:50:56.640 | today's show, it'd be appropriate for me to take a moment and talk with you about my course,
00:51:03.040 | How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis. That course has basically
00:51:08.720 | three major parts in my analysis. The third part involves international expatriation as
00:51:15.280 | being a reasonable and worthwhile way to plan to survive and thrive during an economic crisis.
00:51:21.680 | I'll give you two examples of that. One, it could be possible that your home country,
00:51:28.200 | your home culture could just simply collapse. And that collapse could be caused by various
00:51:34.120 | factors, decline of energy prices or internal cultural strife or civil war, etc. This happens
00:51:41.120 | all around the world all the time. And if you are living in a place where your home
00:51:46.400 | country collapses, one of the best ways to simply continue on with your life is to not
00:51:53.200 | be living there when it collapses. It's so blindingly obvious and yet so under-discussed
00:52:00.160 | that I feel the need to discuss it. The best way to avoid a crisis is not to be living
00:52:05.280 | where there's a crisis happening. And if you think about trying to figure out how to feed
00:52:11.160 | your family right now and living in Caracas, it's a whole lot easier to feed your family
00:52:16.640 | if you're living in London than it is if you're living in Caracas. So this is a big deal.
00:52:23.360 | But then there's other aspect to it. Some things that are crises that could be longer
00:52:28.920 | term. So for example, I've stated here on this show that I don't think the US government
00:52:34.880 | will raise taxes very much on the US population. I don't think that it'll happen. I think that
00:52:42.800 | in the long term, it's my opinion that all of the economic crises in the United States
00:52:48.940 | that are coming in the coming decades will be solved by a combination of inflationary
00:52:53.920 | policies on the money supply and will be solved by just defaulting on various programs in
00:53:01.360 | various ways. I think that's probably the solution that will be moved to rather than
00:53:06.000 | increasing taxation. However, what if I'm wrong? What if I'm wrong about that? I assume
00:53:12.760 | and I anytime I make a decision, I say, "Okay, what if I'm wrong? And if I'm wrong, then
00:53:16.360 | what's my plan?" Well, people talk about my children are in a situation where they're
00:53:21.160 | going to have to pay for what my grandparents and my parents voted in. Well, who says that
00:53:28.240 | my children have to do that? My parents and my grandparents may have voted in this gargantuan
00:53:34.520 | welfare state that will result in bankruptcy of the US government, but why should my children
00:53:40.880 | have to pay for something that they didn't do? Well, if my children are inextricably
00:53:45.500 | linked to the United States of America, such that they can't live without that little blue
00:53:50.600 | passport and without that US citizen status, then yeah, they might actually be forced by
00:53:56.800 | whoever the government goons wind up in office 20, 30 years from now. My children might be
00:54:04.040 | forced to pay for the things that my parents and grandparents voted for, but I would prefer
00:54:11.760 | to make sure that they have another option. Why should I force that on my children? They
00:54:15.980 | didn't vote for that. They're not responsible for it, so why should they hang out and pay
00:54:20.600 | for it? And so when you get into things like this, problems like these, international expatriation
00:54:26.200 | comes into play as a very reasonable solution, a way to put yourself in a situation where
00:54:32.080 | you can extricate yourself from onerous taxation, from declining societies, declining cultures,
00:54:40.440 | etc. So if you're interested in that kind of thing, I go through all the steps in my
00:54:44.320 | course called How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis, and it's helpful
00:54:48.900 | for you if you're worried about just simply losing a job, but it's also helpful for you
00:54:52.720 | if you, like I am, are concerned about, "Well, what do I do if 20 years from now somebody
00:54:59.640 | does actually try to make me and my children pay for the things that my parents and grandparents
00:55:04.600 | voted for?" Well, if somebody tries to do that and actually tries to enforce it, then
00:55:10.400 | I need to be prepared today so that we have an option 20 years from now. And so if that
00:55:15.080 | piques your interest, I hope you'll check it out. Go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/store
00:55:19.880 | and sign up for my course called How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis.
00:55:22.680 | It's my very best solution for a practical, useful way that's inexpensive to put insurance
00:55:29.680 | policies in place on all these things. And when you put it in the context of what we
00:55:33.320 | talked about today, you can have a lot of fun. You can do really well. And you can do
00:55:37.540 | well even if you never need that insurance policy, and you can just simply enjoy life
00:55:42.160 | today. I'm having fun. I'm enjoying my time of being outside the United States. I'm saving
00:55:47.720 | money. I'm living well. I'm loving my wife, loving my children. Is life perfect? Of course
00:55:53.040 | not. Would it be any better anywhere else? I'm unconvinced. And so I hope that this show
00:55:59.080 | and that course would open up to you some ideas that you could then take and apply to
00:56:03.000 | your own life. RadicalPersonalFinance.com/store.
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00:56:34.920 | You